We Are the Hanged Man (30 page)

'Stop him!' barked Claudia at the three amigos. 'You're, you know, you're in training. Don't just let him walk out. He's a fugitive.'

She was looking at Xav and Ando, what with them being the only other two men in the room. Xav, barely nine stone and remarkably timid, was never an option. It fell on Ando. He glanced up at Jericho, who had stopped and was looking curiously at Claudia and her happy band of TV desperados. Jericho's eyes blankly stared back at Ando and, as if possessed of some remarkable superpower, kept him rooted to his seat.

Cher rose quickly and walked to the door. Morris sat with expressionless face, wishing that she'd been the one to act first.

Even better, thought Claudia, sitting in triumph. The camera was running, now let's see Jericho try to force Cher out of the way. He either backed down, in which case from now on they would absolutely own him; or he would try to manhandle her, and they would have the sensational bit of television for which Washington was searching. The perfect result would be Jericho starting a fight and Cher taking him out. Then they would have their TV shot
and
they would own him.

'Excuse me,' said Jericho, and he smiled politely at Cher.

Behind him Claudia scowled.

'We need to do what Claudia wants,' said Cher. 'It's not about the TV show,' she added confidently, 'it's about finding Lol. It's been five days.'

'Miss Mansfield,' said Jericho. It was the first time that any of those in the room had heard him use someone's name; it was genuinely the first time in her life that anyone had ever called her Miss Mansfield, and straight away there was a tone to his voice that Claudia, skilled in the arts of sophistry and manipulation, recognised. 'You know this is wrong. We cannot randomly arrest one of Cher's ex-boyfriends just so we can interrogate him for television purposes. And you know that the ex-boyfriend Claudia has chosen, isn't because there's any evidence against him whatsoever, it's because he's the most volatile, the one who will react the most when confronted and arrested. We just cannot do it. I will not do it.'

His tone was level. Firm, sensible, mature; all the things that Cher deep down knew the show was not.

'I've only been around this circus for a week now, but it's pretty obvious that you're the only proficient person here. You are more than capable of being a police officer and I'm quite happy to say here and now that you ought to win this contest hands down.'

She was trying to stop herself smiling. Behind them, Claudia stood up, but she was wary of the camera, wary of making herself the centre of a filmed confrontation.

'And so, given that you appear to have a natural talent for police work, it must be obvious to you that we cannot, under any circumstances, actually arrest someone just for the sake of a decent bit of television.'

'No,' said Cher, nodding, 'you're right.'

Claudia spat with rage.

'So, I'm sorry to leave you, but there really is something to which I need to attend. I'll be about an hour and a half. In my absence I'm putting you in charge of the investigation.' He indicated the boards on the walls which were covered with everything that they had so far learned in the strange case of the missing Lol. 'I'd be grateful if you could lead a brainstorming session. You've got everything we've learned, or haven't learned, up there. Spread your mind, Miss Mansfield. Are there avenues we've ignored? Is there anything to which we're being wilfully blind just because we don't want to contemplate it? This is the time when you have to open your mind to all the possibilities.'

He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Can you do that for me?' he asked.

Cher, who had in the space of a little over a minute, become totally besotted with the middle-aged, curmudgeonly Detective Chief Inspector, nodded.

'Thank you,' said Jericho.

And ultimately he did not even have to ask her to step out of the way. She did so voluntarily, keen to get on with her new task.

Jericho closed the door behind him and stood still for a second. Deep breath. Wasn't waiting to hear the explosion that would inevitably come from inside. Rather he just needed to recover from the effort of speaking softly and compassionately, from the effort of the lie, from the effort of being someone he wasn't.

Then like a superhero who takes time to recover his powers having moved the Earth out of the way of the meteor, he cricked his neck to the side, breathed a regular breath and walked along the corridor, just as Claudia's screech reached breaking point.

Edgar Matthews of Cullen, Harvey and Daniels, was a small man in his mid-fifties. He wore a grey suit, white shirt and a pink and grey tie, all of which had come from Marks & Spencer. He frequently licked his lips, which Jericho noticed was because they were so dry. He might have suggested lip balm if he'd ever used lip balm himself.

Matthews' fingers were thin and he played with them constantly as he talked. Entwined them and tapped them, occasionally clicked the nails. Nevertheless he spoke confidently with no hint of nerves about him.

Frustrated artist or musician, thought Jericho.

The office was plain, simply and elegantly furnished, appeared chic and expensive without drawing attention to itself.

'We like to act on these things as quickly as possible,' said Matthews. He was reading studiously through the notes that had been compiled by one of his research assistants and did not look up.

Jericho felt his usual awkwardness at sitting in the presence of someone unfamiliar when he himself wasn't in charge. He was naturally comfortable with the position of investigating officer. However, being in a strange office when he wasn't entirely sure of the reason was guaranteed to have most of his words trapped in that uncomfortable black ball in the pit of his stomach.

'Oliver Davis of 145 Pitt Street, St Paul's, Bristol?' He raised his eyes. 'Are you familiar with that name?'

Jericho shook his head. Then he remembered he was talking to a lawyer, and that it would be better for him not to open the conversation with a lie. 'We were aware of his death, and that the circumstances were unusual. So I was aware of his name in a professional capacity.'

'But you didn't know him on any personal level?'

'No,' said Jericho.

Matthews nodded.

'Yes,' he said. 'I didn't think you would. There does seem to be some degree of separation.'

He was nodding and continued to do so. Jericho sat in silence. Glanced at the windows. They were only on the fourth floor above New Oxford Street, but he could hear nothing from the street below, despite the fact that he knew it was clogged with traffic. The usual angry car-horn traffic of London on a slow Wednesday afternoon. Just as he could hear nothing of the busy office outside Matthews' door.

Matthews was hermetically sealed in, no part of the outside world allowed to intrude.

'Why am I here?' asked Jericho. He wasn't desperate to get back to the absurdity of the prime time search for Lol, but at least that was doing what he was used to doing.

Matthews looked up. Bright blue eyes, very striking. Jericho had noticed it when he'd initially entered, something which already seemed a long time ago. He looked at his watch.

'Mr Davis' estate is not, as you might imagine, a large one, but we do need to find his closest surviving relative.'

'Not usually a police matter,' said Jericho.

'No, and neither is it. Albeit it is rather peculiar,' he added.

Jericho, still searching for a straight answer, asked the question with his eyebrows.

'In searching for his closest relative, we discovered that the next in line had also died in rather sad circumstances in recent months.' He looked down, although he well knew the name by now. 'Morten Anderson?'

Jericho shook his head at the enquiring glance.

'Died in a car accident in the Netherlands just before Christmas. He appears to have been an itinerant chap, but he was travelling on a British passport. His closest relative was a…' another check of the paperwork, and this time he did actually appear to need to look, 'Miranda Miller.'

Again the querying look across the desk.

Jericho shook his head, although his curiosity was beginning to overtake his general annoyance at being part of a conversation where he wasn't the one who knew what was going on.

'Died in a surfing accident at Woolacombe beach. Banged her head on some rocks.' He glanced at the notes and said, 'Only twenty-seven.'

Jericho looked blankly across the desk.

'This is the curious one,' said Matthews. 'In relation to you, I mean. We started coming at this from the point of view of Oliver James, as that was how the case was first brought to us. Ultimately though, we have got as far as Miss Miller. The name means nothing to you?'

'When did she die?' asked Jericho. 'Recently?'

'No, last summer. July.'

Jericho nodded, let his thoughts kick in.

'All right,' he said. 'I remember.'

'It was brought to your attention at the time?'

'Saw it on BBC South West. Don't think I ever saw a file or anything. Not our patch. And not really a police matter in any case.'

'No,' said Matthews. 'That wasn't what I meant, not from the point of view of it being a police matter. It seems odd. You weren't contacted?'

'Contacted? What?' said Jericho. The annoyance was once again beginning to trump his curiosity.

'You appear to be Miss Miller's only surviving relative. Which, naturally, also makes you the same for Morten Anderson, and then of course the late Mr Davis.'

Jericho got hold of Haynes before he left London. Met him back in the same café as previously, having caught Haynes a couple of miles short of the M25.

Jericho had twenty minutes to think before Haynes arrived, but mostly he didn't. There were too many directions in which his brain could go. He did wonder, however, whether Haynes ought to have discovered some of this in his investigations of the previous two weeks. Was that an acceptable expectation? By the time Haynes arrived, he'd decided that it wasn't. There was no reason for him to have been looking for any of this information, and no particular reason he would stumble across it.

'If we suppose that one of the Hanged Men applies to the death of Oliver Davis, and that this is related to you because he's related to you, then why didn't you get a card for the other two?'

'That's a good question, Sergeant. But is that the question, or is this a negative proof of the fact that the card is not related to the death of Davis?'

'No coincidences,' said Haynes.

'No, there aren't,' said Jericho. 'Except when there are,' he added. He sounded tired.

Haynes drained his coffee and looked at his watch. He had a few minutes left on his parking ticket.

'I'll get on with checking these and try to see if I can find who's next in the line.'

'Which way?' asked Jericho.

'How d'you mean?'

'Is there someone whose estate will be passed on to Oliver Davis, or is there someone who's in line to get my estate?'

Haynes raised his eyebrows, curled his lip.

'You're not next for the chop, Sir. You're the end of the line. That's why you've been getting the cards.'

*

Jericho did not return to the television studio. Put a call through to Light, told her to make excuses for him. She said that television had done what it does, and was filling in for his absence. Cher had taken to her new responsibilities, and Light suspected that the company would put out the line that she had more or less taken over the running of the investigation at Jericho's insistence. They would just have to wait to see the morning's headlines to find out just what spurious rubbish the newspapers were going to give for Jericho's seeming demotion behind a rookie television contestant.